


She's just a Hufflepuff

by keepingsecrets



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cedric lives!, Fred lives!, Friendship, Gen, Hufflepuffs rock, Underappreciated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-21
Updated: 2008-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepingsecrets/pseuds/keepingsecrets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being denied a promotion due to her House, two friends make Susan a proposition, and prove that they see her as more than a Hufflepuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She's just a Hufflepuff

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a 800 word prompt fic from Laurie, but my muses had other ideas. Thanks to my beta, Maggie, who was the inspiration behind the twins' banter. Prompt listed at the end of the story.

 

 

It wasn't a secret.

Susan Bones was due for a promotion, and a big one.

The entire department knew it. For four years, she had done nothing but solid, productive, dedicated work in the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. She had even done double-duty, working the past three months with the Committee for Experimental Charms, just so everyone was kept abreast with ways to treat various magical mistakes.

But when the announcements for the promotions came down, she wasn't on the list.

Some lazy tart that had only been with the department for a month had earned the promotion. _Her_ promotion.

Normally Susan would have shrugged it off and put her mind back to work. She wasn't terribly ambitious, even though she knew she wouldn't have minded the raise involved with the promotion, and knew that sooner or later, her hard work would be recognized.

But that was before Philbert Dipboot, her department head, stopped by her desk, and said rather unexpectedly, "Bones, we told Chang that you two could swap desks now that she's been promoted."

Swap desks with Chang, whose desk was next to the creaky temperamental magical radiator. A distinct step down from her current desk, which was one with a relatively decent window view she shared with four other desks.

Perhaps it was her inner Gryffindor that had prompted her sniping response, or her wounded pride demanding answers, but rather than acquiescing as Dipboot probably expected, she rose to her feet and propped her fists on her hips. "Why was Chang promoted over me, sir? She doesn't have the experience, or the knowledge of the department." _Not to mention there's a rumor going around the department that she slept her way into the promotion_.

Dipboot blinked. "She's a _Ravenclaw_ , Bones," he replied, as though those words explained how to solve world hunger. "No offense, but you're just a Hufflepuff."

 Just a Hufflepuff. Ever since she had been Sorted, she had heard those words more often than she cared to admit.

_"She was a Hufflepuff, she won't mind staying late."_

_"Oh, don't worry, she's just a Hufflepuff. Don't bother teaching her more powerful magic. She won't be able to cast it anyway."_

_"They're Hufflepuffs. All they do is work and cry."_

_"It's only Bones. Nothing to worry about. She's just a Hufflepuff."_

_Just a Hufflepuff_.

Her temper, normally a dormant volcano, erupted. "So you're basing promotions on former House affiliations now?" she demanded, her voice loud and sharp. Heads turned around the office. She didn't care. Let them hear. She was mad. She wasn't going to let one more prejudiced jerk insult her just because she happened to be a Hufflepuff. She was bloody well proud of her House! "Does this mean that if I had been Sorted into Gryffindor, I would have been promoted as soon as I entered this office? Or would I have had to be a Ravenclaw whose few meager talents are rumored to run more along carnal lines rather than magical?"

Dipboot turned red, confirming Susan's suspicions. "Now see here, Bones--"

"I've worked here for four years, doing more work than anyone else on my level." They were drawing a crowd. Let them stare, she growled, her anger fueling her adrenaline high. Later, she would probably regret being so public about this, but right now, she didn't care. "The entire Department, and even most of the Ministry, knew that I was due for this promotion, and instead you decide to promote someone who has only been with the Department for a month _just because she's a Ravenclaw_?" She was so angry, she couldn't see straight. She drew her wand, ignoring Dipboot's startled leap backwards. She didn't care. She was though.

A swish of her wand, and her personal effects flew into her courier bag.

She locked eyes with Dipboot. "Fine. Chang can have my desk. I quit." Turning on her heel, she marched towards the lift, chin held high.

The crowd parted before her.

No one stepped in her way.

As the gilt-trimmed grills of the lift shut behind her, she heard her former co-workers begin to applaud.

\---------

Three days, twenty Ministry owls, and several visits from Cedric Diggory, Hannah Abbott, and Zacharias Smith later, Susan thought she could safely say her friends thought she had finally gone round the bend.

Considering that by the time they heard about her rather uncharacteristically dramatic resignation, it had been blown up to mythic proportions by her former co-workers who were a few firewhiskeys, gillywaters, and mulled meads into their night, she couldn't really fault them for thinking she had lost her mind.

Hannah had been so sure of it that she left her job as bartender at the Leaky Cauldron early, and pounded on Susan's door until Susan answered, as calm and sane as if the day's events had never happened. For a bit, Susan knew Hannah had thought it was all an elaborate joke. At least until her former Housemate saw Susan's dining table, its normally clean surface littered with the various knickknacks Susan had kept on her desk at the Ministry.

The reality had just begun to sink in when Zacharias knocked on her door, Cedric hard on his heels a few minutes later. It was still a bit beyond Susan as to how Cedric had heard about her resignation so quickly when he was supposed to have been on vacation in Spain, but if there was one thing she knew about the wizarding world, it was that gossip traveled fast.

Especially if said gossip involved a former D.A. member having a "shouting match" with their now ex-boss in "the middle of the Ministry of Magic".

It took a bit before she could get through her entire story. Cedric had protested her comments about Chang, which hadn't surprised Susan. After all, Chang had been his first serious love. She would have hexed him herself if he hadn't at least offered a token protest about his former lover. Zacharias kept adding commentary on Dipboot and Chang, which while snarky and based on mostly unfounded "facts" were enough to keep her snorting in amusement, and Cedric and Hannah arguing with him about biased observations.

Once she finished explaining, she wasn't surprised that they understood her anger. She wasn't even surprised that Cedric and Zacharias both offered to hex Dipboot, or that Hannah was completely in favor of banning Chang from the Leaky Cauldron.

But the one thing they couldn't seem to wrap their minds around was the fact that sweet, innocent, good-natured Susan Bones had all but screamed at her boss and quit her job.

Susan was, as Zacharias had put it on his second visit, practically unflappable. Nothing rattled her. Nothing could make her temper snap. Nothing could convince her to give up a project or job once she decided she was going to get it done.

The fact she had done two of the three things had her friends, and probably everyone else who knew her, convinced that the apocalypse was coming.

\--------

Susan didn't know what has possessed her to walk into Weasley Wizarding Wheezes one morning a little over a week after her resignation from the Ministry. She wasn't a close friend with the Weasley twins like Hermione or Cedric, but a friendship was still there. It was a friendship born a month after the Final Battle, when she and Hermione grabbed some of their fellow D.A. members, marched down to the twins' ruined shop, and went to work rebuilding the shop, now double the size as the twins had managed to purchase Number 94.

It had taken a week to rebuild the now-expanded shop, and another solid week of spellcasting by Hermione, Susan, Harry, Cedric, and the twins before the containment spells and wards were set into place. Somewhere in those two weeks, she had formed a friendship with the twins, and while they didn't exactly run in the same circles, she knew she could count on them for a good laugh when she needed it.

Crossing the quiet alley to the storefront, she ignored the "Mischief Managed -- CLOSED" sign on the door, and tapped her wand against the doorknob. The twins had an "open door" policy for their friends, but only those people who had helped them reset the spells on the shop knew the spell combination to unlock the door.

All in all, it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, only those few people could enter the shop, and therefore reach the twins' flat above the shop, at nearly any time of day. However, it also meant that the likelihood of something exploding upon entry, a creation whizzing directly at her, or as was the case on one memorable occasion, both twins nearly bowling her over as they tried to escape Hermione and Ginny's wrath, increased ten times over.

Pushing the door open, Susan tensed, ready to duck at the barest glimpse of something coming towards her.

Nothing.

She sighed in relief. _Thank Merlin_.

Wandering through the shop, she noticed their newest line of fireworks that promised to "follow you wherever you go!"--it was a wonder the professors at Hogwarts hadn't demanded their heads on a platter yet--, a new addition to the Skiving Snackboxes "now with Burping Bonbons!" --she bet McGonagall was ready to tear her hair out for that one, she hated it when people burped--, and a new generation of pygmy puffs sleeping peacefully in their cage, the pink, purple, and cream puffs of fur seeming to melt together.

She grinned at the newest display for their Lecture-Me-Not Quills, remembering how she, Hermione, and Cedric had commiserated over being bored to tears during an interdepartmental staff meeting, and wishing that Quick Quotes Quills worked for further distances. Never ones to miss an opportunity, the twins leapt at the prospect of a new challenge.

_I'll have to send Hermione and Cedric one of those_ , she decided, noting the variety of quills the twins had enchanted. _They'll love it_.

From the backroom of the shop came a loud crash.

"Don't touch that!" one of the twins yelled. "Don't touch that! Don't--"

An explosion ripped through the back room of the store. Flinging herself to the floor, Susan found herself with her wand in hand and at the ready. It seemed that her war-honed reflexes hadn't diminished any in the past five years.

Boxes of merchandise tumbled to the floor from the force of the explosion, the new round of noise causing the pygmy puffs to start shrieking their little hearts out.

"You touched it," the twin groused a bit hoarsely. Something metal clattered to the floor in the back room. "You just _had_ to touch it."

"You didn't say what I wasn't supposed to touch," a slightly lower voice replied. Susan grinned, picking herself up off the floor. Fred always was a bit more contrary than George. "At least we know it works now."

"Do I want to know what just exploded?" Susan called, and began to pick up the boxes that had fallen and replace them on the shelves. "Or do I need to call my old employers to come sort you two out?"

"Susan?" the twins chorused in unison.

Fred bounded out of the backroom, his smoking hair standing on end. "It's our favorite Hufflepuff!" He picked her up, twirling her around in a hug. "Harry came in the other day and told us about you giving your boss a long-overdue proper telling-off. Right good job you did too."

He set her down only for George to repeat his twin's actions, only spinning in the opposite direction. "We were going to come over with a cake and butterbeers tonight to celebrate your liberation from those wankers with you." George winked. "Should have known that you couldn't resist our irresistible good looks--"

"--brilliant charm--"

"--impeccable sense of humor--"

"--and explosive creativity for that long," Susan finished dryly, replacing a stack of Skiving Snackboxes on their proper shelf. "You're lucky those containment spells are as strong as they are."

George pointed at Fred. "It's his fault! He touched it!"

Fred pointed at George. "He didn't tell me what I wasn't supposed to touch!"

"It was on fire!"

"But it didn't hurt, did it?"

"The explosion did!"

"Minor technicality."

Susan snickered. As she had learned during the rebuilding, logic wasn't something that was terribly important to the twins whenever they bickered with each other. "Fred, didn't your mother ever teach you not to play with fire?"

"Maybe." He smirked, eyeing her up and down. "Charlie said it was always worth it though."

It was just Fred, she reminded herself, trying not to blush. He was an absolutely incorrigible flirt to George's somewhat quieter approach. "Charlie also plays with dragons on a regular basis." She turned her attention to George. "So what were you working on?"

George flicked his wand, the misplaced merchandise zooming back to their proper shelves. "A project for Bill and Charlie. Bill wants to do something romantic for Fleur, and asked us to help, and Charlie's getting ready to pro--"

"Promote someone," Fred interrupted hurriedly, shooting George a reproachful look. "You know, at the reserve. Speaking of which, we're still looking for someone to take that position for head researcher. Don't suppose you have any ideas for potential candidates?"

"Uh huh," she replied, unconvinced. "Somehow I don't think Charlie had an explosion in mind for a romantic atmosphere when he proposes. And you scared off the last two potential candidates I suggested."

"They were pansies who couldn't take a good joke, and ran at the first explosion," George retorted, then took on an innocent expression. "What makes you think that Charlie is going to propose?"

"This is Charlie we're talking about, remember?" Fred added. "The lifelong bachelor."

Susan propped a hip against a nearby display. "I might have believed that before I met Charlie and seen him with Mona." She internally laughed at the twins' faces. "So when is he planning on proposing?"

"Have you noticed, Forge, how we can't seem to slip anything by our dear wonderful Hufflepuff?" Fred inquired, slinging an arm around her shoulders.

"I have, Gred," George replied, completing the Weasley sandwich by slinging his arm around her waist. "We can't let her out of our sights, can we?"

"Might spill all of our secrets, she might."

"Might tell Charlie that his secret is out."

"Might use her powers for evil."

"She might tell your mother the truth about the fireworks you were planning on using at her birthday party if you don't start talking like normal people," Susan added, her head spinning at the back-and-forth banter between the twins.

"But my dear Hufflepuff, we are normal people!"

"You can't get more normal than us!"

"Actually, Gred, I'd say that we're above average."

"Right you are, Forge. After all, we are handsome--"

"--devilishly smart--"

"--and wonderfully talented wizards. Surely that would count us as above average."

"And a pair of above-average wizards deserves an above-average creative assistant."

"One who knows how to undo our oh-so-rare mistakes and help us cause a whole new level of chaos."

"One who is adorable when she's confused--"

"--firm in her convictions and a determined worker--"

"--and is perhaps one of the best people to have ever walked through our doors."

The twins turned as one to face her, their faces entirely mischievous even as their somber eyes were all Susan needed to see to tell that they were being entirely serious about what they were about to say. They reached out, each clasping one of her hands. "Susan, would you come to work for us?"

\---------

A week later, Susan Bones sat in her apartment with her closest friends, grinning ear-to-ear as they all stared at her in disbelief. She didn't need to look at the morning's copy of the Daily Prophet to know what had brought them to her home on this early Saturday morning.

It was the same thing contributing to her larger-than-normal pile of post on her dining table.

It was the same thing which had prompted her to close her Floo the night before when the reporter warned her and the twins that the article was likely to be the main story for its page. The last thing she needed, or wanted, was to field Floo calls all morning from her former boss and co-workers about her choice in new employment, not to mention the busybody reporters from various other wizarding publications. Stories about anyone who had been in Dumbledore's Army ranked third only to stories about Death Eaters and the Golden Trio.

If the twins didn't threaten to jinx someone before the weekend was out, she was going to be quite surprised.

As it was, the reporter had nearly found himself the victim of a handful of Weasley products when Fred took exception to the reporter's harmless flirting with Susan.

Maybe he was just looking out for me, Susan reasoned. It wouldn't have been the first time that the twins had looked out for her. From helping her smooth over any snags left from her abrupt departure from the Ministry, to keeping her company whenever she went someplace where she might encounter hostility from former co-workers who were displeased at having to pick up Susan's rather sizable workload, they had been with her every step of the way.

Much like she had apparently been for the twins.

_"What caused you to choose a Hufflepuff to serve as your Head Researcher?" James Garnier asked, his quill poised over a new roll of parchment. Already the reporter had asked the three of them a bevy of questions that had filled two rolls of parchment, and he didn't show any sign of stopping soon._

_"She's more than just a Hufflepuff. She's an incredible worker, she's been with us every step of the way since we reopened five years ago, and she's more than intelligent enough to give any Ravenclaw a true run for their money," Fred replied, flashing Susan a quick smile_.

_She grinned at the subtle dig at Cho Chang._

_"If anything," George added, "her affiliation with Hufflepuff only increases her value." Susan blinked, surprised. That was the first time she had ever heard someone say that particular phrase. "Hufflepuffs are the ultimate embodiment of hard work, determination, loyalty, and team work. We couldn't have asked for a better combination, and the fact that Susan is everything else that we were searching for made her a perfect fit for this job."_

"So," Zacharias said, breaking the silence. "You're going to work for the twins."

Susan nodded.

"You're going to help them cause more mayhem, more chaos, and generally drive every single parent and teacher in the Isles absolutely crazy," Hannah continued. "You're going to risk being blown up, turned into any number of animals, and most likely have some sort of unusual thing growing from your body."

She nodded again with a mental giggle. Her father had reacted nearly the same way when she told him about her new job before laughing. Later, he told her that causing mischief after telling off the Ministry was something of a family tradition. He was just a bit surprised at just how whole-heartedly she would be carrying out the tradition.

"You're absolutely sure that we couldn't convince you to come work with one of us?" Cedric pressed. "Even if we bribed you with a trip to Australia or Greece? Or a never-ending supply of Chocolate Frogs and Ice Mice?"

She scowled at him. He knew she would adore any or all of the above, but she gave her word to the twins. More than that, she wanted the job. Stubborn, Susan shook her head. "Never."

To her astonishment, they grinned at each other and laughed.

"Well mates, that's it then," Cedric announced, opening the front door to usher the others out of her flat. "She's calm again."

"She hasn't yelled."

"And she's determined to see this job through." Cedric nodded decisively. "Apocalypse averted." She threw a pillow at him, which missed and hit Zacharias instead. Cedric grinned at Susan. "Still on for dinner tonight?"

"Three Broomsticks, six o'clock." She grinned. "We might have company. The twins said they didn't want to face the wrath of their mother, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't look too eager to face it themselves either."

Cedric snorted, throwing his reply over his shoulder as he walked out the front door. "And they say they're Gryffindors."

**Author's Note:**

> Laurie's Challenge:  
> Characters: Susan Bones, Fred Weasley, George Weasley  
> Situation Prompt: Susan Bones is still treated like a Hufflepuff even now that she's graduated from Hogwarts. So, entering the twins' joke shop, she decides to make a new name for herself.  
> Required Quote: "Don't touch that, don't touch that, don't! ...you touched it."  
> Rating: Up to you.
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own Harry Potter or anything else of JK Rowling's creation. These are her characters. I'm simply borrowing them.


End file.
